Yearly Archives: 2011

MIUI 2.3.4a Alpha for Acer Liquid Android phone is now available for download and flashing. This new MIUI build for Acer Liquid is based on Thepasto’s custom kernel and comes integrated with Liquid Settings courtesy of Enrix835 and Gnufabio at MIUI Android forums. For those who don’t know, MIUI custom ROMs are third party Android firmware deigned to optimize the looks and feel of select Android devices. Like CyanogenMod, there is a whole team of professional Android developer empowering MIUI and it is due to this continuous and consistent support, that MIUI is quickly gaining fans throughout Android circles.
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Now that the Desire S has been rooted, custom ROMs have begun springing up on the scene. MIUI is one of those, thanks to the Fengbao Android ROM Team. If you’re familiar with MIUI ROMs, chances are you would not want to move to any other ROM as your daily driver. However this one in particular for the Desire S is not entirely fully functional.
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There are multiple online and desktop image editors available for free but they support mostly common effects like adding sepia, emboss or sketch effects to an image. TiltShiftGenerator is a desktop application that lets you add the hard-to-come-by tilt shift effect to any photo. The app lets you add both a radial and linear tilt to an image, lets you control the degree of the tilt, place the central point of the tilt anywhere on the image, adjust the level of vignette and increase or decrease image brightness, contrast and saturation. All images are saved as JPEG.
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Foto2AVI is a free tool to help you create video slideshows from unlimited number of photos. The converted pictures can be customized with available effects, subtitles, transitions, animations, and more. Foto2AVI supports external audio tracks for creating video slideshows with complimentary audio to add vigor to your sideshows. Although the application's name is Foto2AVI, however, other than AVI, the supported video formats (for creating video sideshows) also include, MKV, MP4, MPEG and FLV. Support for Dolby Surround Sound 5.1 is also available, as well as integrated audio editing. Foto2AVI also has option to create video slideshows in HD formats.
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Hulu has transformed the way we watch movies or TV serials and other media content. Although there are official Hulu apps for different mobile platforms available, but still you need to tweak your device for optimized experience that enhances media watching on Android tablets and devices. There are several Hulu hacks available for different Android tablets, but Galaxy Tab 10.1 was pretty much left alone from this race. Shep211 has shared a method on XDA developers that will let you install Hulu app and watch content without any glitches or issues.
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Got an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and feeling envious of your friends with Android devices having several awesome keyboard replacement applications that they can install and use at will? If your iOS device is jailbroken, we've got good news for you! Now available on Cydia (currently in beta), Swype for iOS is a faster, much more fluent text entry alternative to the stock keyboard that you get the device with. Like the Android input method by the same name, this free Cydia tweak lets you type words simply by swiping your finger across the keyboard from one letter to the next. It even displays a fancy blue trail of your finger’s movements. Cydia source and installation method after the break.
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When it comes to navigation apps, few names surpass Google Maps. That being said, unless you are able to benefit from such apps in offline mode while on the move, they don't prove to be all that helpful. Even if you opt to resort to your mobile data during navigation, chances are that you might end up reaching (or even, exceeding) your cap, without even making it to your destination. In short, the app beckons for support for offline mode, of course, along with several other sought-after features. Of the few handy new features that the latest update (5.7.0, as of this writing) of Google Maps for Android brings, the long-awaited support for offline maps tops the list. Particularly useful for smartphone users with a limited data plan, the Download map area option allows you to save map tiles in a 10 mile radius around regions of your choice and lets you explore and get directions within said regions without an active internet connection. The feature has been included as part of the experimental features grouped under Menu > More > Labs. Join us after the break for a brief, simple how-to.
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Session Manager is an extremely popular Firefox extension that lets you save multiple Firefox browsing sessions. While the extension has just about every feature you could ever need to back up a browsing session on your system, what it lacks is the ability to export sessions as HTML files. Session Manager Export Tool is a Firefox extension that lets you do just that so you can open your saved session in any browser or import your saved season to the Firefox bookmarks library.
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Finally there is some great news for HTC Desire S owners as AlphaRevX public beta 2 build is now out! The build is claimed to be compatible with Droid incredible 2, as posted here, and HTC Desire S. AlpharevX is basically a HBoot mod for Android devices with locked bootloaders and and allows you to gain S-OFF on your device in order to flash custom recoveries, ROMs, root etc.

Earlier we covered a post on the Android 2.3.4 based XXKG1 firmware for the Samsung Galaxy S II, but that was purely a stock ROM. The much famous VillainROM has now been updated to 2.3.4 in light of the recent 2.3.4 leak, and is ready to be installed on the Galaxy S II. This 2.3.4 update has removed the Android OS battery drain that plagued the 2.3.3 firmware.
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Some problems with network connections are hard to diagnose on a computer, as one can appear connected even when the IP address is invalid for DHCP connectivity, such as an APIPA. Testing such a connection can take some configuration checks which sometimes consumes a lot of time. Sentinel is a handy portable application for Network Administrators which can help troubleshoot such problems easily. It allows you to test your TCP communication to help determine if your computer is online. It uses TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) to send data in the form of message unit to help you check if the message is successfully sent.
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Flash issues have been quite frequent on Ubuntu systems. The problem has been often associated with installation of faulty plugins and difficulty in identifying the right flash version for an operating system. Flash-Aid is a Firefox extension for Ubuntu and Debian Linux users which helps remove conflicting Firefox Flash plugins and allows installing appropriate Flash versions. Flash-Aid has the ability to detect required settings automatically, such as, your system architecture, OS version, plugins to be removed and helps select the best plugin to be installed on your system. It also provides Flash update alerts, that detects new beta versions from Adobe Labs. It’s advanced mode allows installing Flash from Google Chrome browser or from a local file. You can also use Flash-Aid to apply some tweaks to improve performance and for fixing common issues.
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If you are a regular user of Youtube and love listening to music, then the name Vevo is sure to ring a bell for you. In less than 2 years this popular service has taken the entertainment industry by storm. Vevo is the ultimate source of latest and upcoming music. Hosting more than 50,000 videos, it has a partnership with Google and licensing rights to most of the major record labels. Vevo is appreciated by artists because it goes a long way in preventing copyright infringements and to give users the music they want in one place. All in all if you are in touch with Vevo, you are in touch with music. Now imagine all that available on your Windows Phone 7, and that too for free.
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Samsung Focus is one of those newer smartphones which run Windows Phone 7 and are less than a year old. Ever since WP7’s update Nodo was released a few months back, there have been bug reports coming out quite consistently. One of these bugs relates to Samsung Focus (AT&T). For numerous Focus users the upload speeds over the internet have gone down drastically ever since they updated to Nodo. This can be extremely annoying if you are uploading some important file using your phone or maybe even just streaming. The internet works just fine on other devices, but as soon as you start using it on your Focus, speeds can get diminished by as much as 50%. Fortunately, though, this nuisance can now be cured quite easily! You don't need any hacking knowledge or the ability to follow complicated steps, just read the instructions past the break and your phone's internet speeds will surely soar.
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While many users download YouTube videos, extracting subtitles (to perhaps be used with an encoded version of the video) is not a widely practiced concept. This is probably due to the lack of availability of YouTube subtitle grabbing applications. Youtube SRT Downloader is a portable tool to download SRT subtitles from YouTube videos. For YouTube SRT to work, the video must have a closed caption file assigned to it in order to convert the subtitle format to SRT.
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Image compression is useful for a number of reasons. Webmasters often compress images before uploading them to their website to save bandwidth, web hosting space and to reduce webpage loading time. Likewise, common users can save hard disk space by compressing images. For example, if you have a folder containing high resolution images as heavy as 1 GB, then you can compress and/or convert them to reduce the size to something like 400MB (approximately). Caesium is an open source image compression application which can batch compress and convert images within a short period of time. The supported formats include JPG, BMP and PNG. While many users (including us) prefer IrfanView for image compression, however, Caesium arguably provides easier options for batch image conversion and compression. Therefore, people who may not prefer IrfanView, can use Caesium.
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Flash isn’t just for watching videos as some game junkies will testify; there’s a whole world of Flash games and there are people who are down right nuts about them and they might find it annoying that not all games can be played in full screen mode. Full Screen Flash is a Chrome extension that automatically detects flash content on a web page and lets you view it in full screen by clicking on the extension icon in the URL bar.
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One of the major problems faced by any user when moving on to a new mobile phone is the transfer of contacts to the new device. Many of us have become exceedingly dependent on Microsoft Outlook for the management and storing of our contacts and personal data about the people we know and interact with. If you have your Outlook contacts synced with your current phone, then you are bound to think twice before getting a handset upgrade as importing contacts can be a big headache. The easiest and most logical solution is to connect your Outlook to your Windows Live account, providing you with all the contacts you need on your phone. But how can this be done? Well, all you need is a tool from Microsoft that appears to be tailor-made for this purpose (and most probably it really is).
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We have confirmation that Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread has reached the Samsung Galaxy S II in the form of a leak! Previously Android 2.3.3 had been made available for this device but suffered the Android OS battery drain bug. The current 2.3.4 firmware (XXKG1) is said to have removed that bug and make your device last a bit longer.
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In today’s fast-paced world it is imperative to keep track of your domestic and official obligations. But this is not always the easiest of tasks because of constantly changing schedules and a multitude of appointments. Google Calendar was developed to counter exactly the same issue stated above. But now we are living in the era of smartphones. The use of desktop computers is diminishing day by day. It is more convenient to have apps like Google calendar on your phone which stays with you for a predominant part of the day. However there are times when merely one calendar fails to meet your needs, like if you want to keep your work and home commitments separate from each other. These multiple Google calendars can be a pretty useful tool for you, but this usefulness is reduced considerably if you are not able to sync all your calendars with your Windows Phone 7 device, as has been the reported case. There are a lot of problems with syncing more than one Google calendars in WP7. But if you have decided to upgrade to Mango, then all such problems just vanished from your life! Read More

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